Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Ask an Expert and Project Mogul

Once
in a while (okay, more often than that) I engage in the beating of the dead
horse and an opportunity for that arose today (February 25). It is my opinion
that few thinking people actually believe the Project Mogul explanation for
what fell near Roswell, but I have found some interesting things about this as
I was researching another question and having been inspired by the Smithsonian’s
latest “Ask an Expert.” I’m not sure what this Roger Launius is an expert in
but clearly it is not the history of UFOs. He makes some elementary mistakes
suggesting, for example, that Kenneth Arnold saw one flying saucer, crediting
him with the creation of the term. He takes the American-centric view that this
UFO craze started with Arnold, overlooking the Foo Fighters and the Ghost
Rockets as I outlined in Government UFO
Secrets which is a not subtle way to plug the book. And he was unaware that
an unofficial investigation began in December 1946 at Wright Field so that it
had been collecting this “aerial phenomena” data for months before Arnold
entered the scene.

Anyway,
he buys into the Project Mogul explanation and like too many he buys the Air
Force document, their huge report that has very little relevance to the Roswell
case (hundreds of pages are devoted to all sorts of reports on balloon flights)
that “explains” the Roswell crash. He apparently was unaware that Flight No. 4
had been cancelled, that Brazel (whose name he mispronounces) was in the field
where the debris was found nearly every other day so that the debris would have
been found long before Brazel took it to the sheriff had that been true and
that the configuration for the array used in the diagram does not match the
configuration of the flights in New Mexico, no matter what Charles Moore
claimed. In fact, we can see some of this deception in the Executive Summary of
that massive report. I found the following statement on page 26. “Doctor
Spilhaus, Professor Moore, and certain other members of the group were aware of
the actual purpose of the project, but they did not know of the project
nickname at the time.”

This
struck me as silly. If you have a highly classified project and you can
accomplish your mission without explaining the ultimate purpose to a bunch of
civilians who are doing the “grunt” work with no need to know, it seems silly
to compromise that mission by sharing information that is irrelevant to their
goal. I mean, there was no reason for those in New Mexico working on what Moore
was careful to claim was the New York University Balloon Project to know that
it was to spy on the Soviets. They could have just as easily been told they
needed the constant level balloons to measure radiation in the upper atmosphere
so that they might better protect pilots of aircraft flying at those altitudes
and later to astronauts as the orbited the Earth (if they were thinking that
far ahead in 1947). Or they were engaged in attempts to study the “Jet Stream”
which was not well understood in 1947.

I
believe that the statement was the result of Moore saying, repeatedly, that he
didn’t know the name of the project until Robert Todd told him in 1992 or
thereabouts. However, the idea that those in New Mexico didn’t know the name is
demonstrably false. All anyone had to do was flip back to Dr. Albert Crary’s
diary that is published in the same massive report. You can read Crary
referencing the “Mogul equipment” and the like on several occasions. The name
wasn’t important, it was the ultimate purpose that was classified… and the
research going on in New Mexico was anything but classified (though the
recorded data was, for some reason, classified).

Taking
this just one step farther, on page 27, the report tells us, “However, on July
10, 1947, following the Ramey press conference, the Alamogordo News published an article with photographs demonstrating
multiple balloon and targets at the same location as the NYU group operated
from at [sic] Alamogordo Army Air Field. Professor Moore expressed surprise at
seeing this since his was the only balloon test group in the area. He stated, ‘It
appears that there was some type of umbrella cover story to protect our work
with Mogul.’”

Yeah,
well, this doesn’t quite agree with what he had told me when I showed him the
picture before the Air Force entered the case. He pointed to the ladder in one
of those pictures and said that he had bought it with petty cash because they
needed it to launch the balloons. So, he was aware of the demonstration in
Alamogordo and while he might not have participated in it himself, it is clear
that the Mogul equipment was being used.

You
might ask, “What does this all prove?” And, who really cares for all this
minutia? Well, I just thought it was it somewhat interesting because it demonstrates
a willingness to accept anything said by those who claim it was a balloon and
not a spacecraft. Many are quick to condemn the decades old memories of the
witnesses who had talked about the crash, but accept without question those who
say it was a balloon. Here, clearly, Moore’s recollections of the events are in
error, documented error, but are accepted without question. And this lack of
critical thinking is exhibited throughout Launius’ expert opinion.

Launius
showed this to us in his video explanation of the Roswell case. If you have an
interest in seeing it, it can be found here:

And, no this doesn't prove that what fell was alien. It simply provides additional evidence that it wasn't a Mogul balloon... and confirms that a high level of secrecy around Mogul existed is nothing more than a myth. It shows that some very smart people just don't care enough about UFOs to ask the skeptical questions.

65 comments:

Thanks for qualifying "thinking" persons. I'm sure our favorite debunkers will chime in with their dogma soon. Having read your and a number of folks work and from my own experience, I don't find the Mogul explanation credible. I also am not convinced of a spacecraft and find it more likely that some cold war era nonsense that should have long ago been declassified is the explanation. I am still open to the possibility of an alien craft, but knowing our leaks-like-a-sieve community of cleared personnel, I don't think we could have kept that juicy a secret all this time. Unfortunately, as I have seen from personal experience, mundane explanations don't kill conspiracies. Since I also consider Foo Fighters and Ghost Rockets as crapola, I am now going to read your latest book as I expect you will change my thinking.

The Air Force study back in the mid-90s clearly states that the all of the other (non-ET) options to explain the Roswell "crash" have been excluded except for the Mogul balloon. But, you have made the case the Mogul balloon in their theory, i.e. #4, didn't fly or as you said was cancelled. So it would seem that all we are left with is the fly saucer explanation.

Let me start by saying that I applaud folks like yourself that post with your name and even pictures. In my view that gives you credibility as a stand up person who doesn't hide behind anonymity when expressing your beliefs.

With that said this is what I take issue with in your comments.

"..but knowing our leaks-like-a-sieve community of cleared personnel, I don't think we could have kept that juicy a secret all this time."

What amazes me is that there is a legion of people, creditable people, who have come forward who have either been discredited or ignored. It's sort of a UFO catch 22, the skeptics and debunkers say the government couldn't keep something like this secret because some people in the know would talk. Yet there is a mountain of creditable people who have talked only to be ridiculed.

Let's look at a short list: Salas, Jacobs, Halt, Penniston, Marcel, Marcel,Jr, Haut, de Brouwer, Terauchi, Callahan, Ruppelt, Torres, Chop and Cooper to name just a few. Then you have other creditable people such as Dr. Edgar Mitchell or former Canadian Minister of Defense, Paul Hellyer, who state they have creditable information that the US knows we are being visited by ET's. The list goes on and on. Are people all fools or lying?

It must be taken into consideration that in government there are two kinds of secrets. Political secrets that can almost never be kept, and intelligence and military secrets that our government as well as other governments are very good at keeping secret.

How has our government been able to keep such a "juicy secret" all this time? I think you have to go back and look at the Robertson Panel and Durant Report from 1953 and the Colorado Project and Condon Report of 1969 to get a better picture of the entire UFO/ET issue.

@KevinRoger Launius is the official NASA historian, and has a Ph.D in History. These credientials, while impressive, show him to be embedded in the NASA bureaucracy, and, given its close association with the military, the AF as well. He tows the official line..That said, my guess is that he gave the subject as much attention as he thought it deserved, i.e., not very much..NASA and the AF have had this UFO monkey on their back for so long, they just want to shake it off, by any means possible.

@RustyI've been following Steven Aftergoods blog (http://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/) for years. If there's one thing I've determined, it's this: There's no logic in gov't secrecy; it's a fetish.

Check it out. You can read all the Congressional Research Service reports there, too....

According to his biography on the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum website:

"Roger D. Launius is Associate Director of Collections and Curatorial Affairs at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Between 1990 and 2002 he served as chief historian of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. A graduate of Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa, he received his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, in 1982 and worked as a civilian historian with the United States Air Force until 1990."

So previously historian for the Air Force, NASA, and now curator at the Smithsonian A&S Museum.

Maybe as a professional historian for the Air Force and NASA, he should have read their own official histories of flight, which ALL clearly state that the FIRST Mogul flight in New Mexico was the one on June 5, 1947 (Flight #5), not the nonexistent "Flight #4" of June 4, which he claims explains Roswell. This is in addition to those Mogul documents in the AF debunking Roswell report, which he cites, which REALLY state that the flight scheduled for June 4 was cancelled on account of cloud cover, and the Mogul summary tables which also show a blank in the tables for "Flight #4", just as for the early Flights #2 & #3, also clearly stated as being cancelled.

Here are the links to the official histories of flight which 100% contradict this curiously historically ignorant historian:

http://tinyurl.com/lyt3ogz

1) Chronology: From the Cambridge Field Station to the Air Force Geophysics Laboratory [the very people that oversaw Mogul--you think they would know] 1945-1985 (AFGL, Hanscom AFB, Special Reports, No. 262, 6 Sept 1985), p. 3: “1947, 5 Jun, The first Army Air Forces research balloon launch was conducted at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, by a New York University team working under contract for the Air Material Command. It featured a cluster of rubber balloons. The first polyethylene plastic balloons in this project were launched on 3 July 1947.

2) NASA website:

http://tinyurl.com/mxnwxy2

Aeronautics and Astronautics: An American Chronology of Science and Technology in the Exploration of Space, 1915-1960 (NASA, 1961), 1945-1949, pp. 49-63: “1947, June 5: FirstAAF research balloon launch (a cluster of rubber balloons) at Holloman, by New York University team under contract with the Air Materiel Command.”

http://tinyurl.com/kpm238xhttp://tinyurl.com/kgfpwgk

3) U.S. Air Force: A Complete History (The Air Force Historical Foundation, 2006), p. 300, “1947, 5 June, A New York University team under contract with the Air Materiel Command launches the Army Air Forces' first research balloon. The cluster of rubber spheres is released at Holloman, New Mexico.”

Thus a professional flack for NASA, the Air Force, and the Smithsonian tries to debunk Roswell as caused by a nonexistent balloon flight. Brilliant!

Instead of "Ask an Expert", would be more aptly titled "Stump the Chump".

@Larry, you make a good point that maybe the leaks have occurred and were not believed. While my statement was limited to the Roswell incident, in general, I'm not convinced. My experience leads me to find a lot of holes and discontinuities in the "leaker" accounts. For a few, the self-aggrandizement really undermines their credibility.@albert, I appreciate your point. Thanks.

I would like to add that the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum has been in the forefront of debunking Roswell since at least 1997, when they published (along with the Air Force and their "Crash Dummies" Roswell "explanation" just in time for Roswell's 50th anniversity), their shamefull book "UFO Crash at Roswell: The Genesis of a Modern Myth", by Benson Saler, Charles Ziegler, and Mogul engineer Charles Moore.

The worst of the book were the chapters by Moore, which were primarily a model using available winds aloft data, purporting to demonstrate that the (fictional, nonexistent, cancelled) Flight #4 flew "exactly" to the Foster Ranch crash site.

But when Brad Sparks and I independently went over Moore's mathematical model a few years later, it quickly became obvious that Moore was guilty of a hoax, playing all sorts of games with the mathematics. In brief, he CHEATED over and over again to get his nonexistent balloon flight "Exactly" there.

Thus Smithsonian Press lent its prestigious name to a hoax in order to discredit Roswell and HAS NEVER DISOWNED IT even after it was exposed. Obviously, if any sort of scientific peer review was done on the book before publication, the reviewers did not bother to do their job properly.

Then Smithsonian/NASA/AF company flacks like Launius continue into the present day (note date of speech was 2011) to promote this nonexistent balloon flight as the solution to Roswell.

Another example of the Smithsonian toeing the party line can be found in an online article they did on Roswell in August 2010. Again, they kowtowed to the Mogul explanation, but at least mentioned some of the other side, including some of my work. But the article was full of historical inaccuracies, primarily attributing opinions of the AF OSI team in 1994 to those of the GAO, claiming the GAO believed Mogul was the explanation.

Here was a detailed rebuttal to that article which I first posted on UFO Updates:

http://ufoupdateslist.com/2010/aug/m26-006.shtml

At the same time, I followed up with a post to the Smithsonian zine listing a few of the more serious mistakes. In violation of their own editorial policy, they completely censored my post and it was never published. What I wrote them I then posted to UFO Updates:

http://ufoupdateslist.com/2010/aug/m26-006.shtml

I then wrote a followup post protesting their censorship and again summarizing some of their factual mistakes. They then published PART of that post, ironically (but not surprisingly) CENOSRING the part where I complained about them censoring my first post. Here was the second complete post, which I republished on UFO Updates:

http://ufoupdateslist.com/2010/aug/m30-009.shtml

Part of the problem in trying to have an HONEST debate on subjects like Roswell is the refusal of many skeptics/debunkers to be accurate with the historical record, in many cases being obviously ignorant of the facts. Then there is the censorship of the inconvenient facts that they don't like to hear, like the nonexistence of the alleged Flight #4 culprit, or that organizations like the Smithsonian should do some basic fact checking and not engage in blatant censorship when their mistakes are pointed out.

"I would like to add that the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum has been in the forefront of debunking Roswell since at least 1997, when they published (along with the Air Force and their "Crash Dummies" Roswell "explanation" just in time for Roswell's 50th anniversity), their shamefull book "UFO Crash at Roswell: The Genesis of a Modern Myth", by Benson Saler, Charles Ziegler, and Mogul engineer Charles Moore."

Rudiak is completely correct here. Though I think he is being too nice to Moore...

I don't know if the debris was a Mogul balloon or not, but the Army's over-reaction to it seems strange. I've often wondered if radiation was a concern.

This also applies to Plains of San Agustin story, with descriptions of hairless bodies and the military scaring away witnesses. Barney Barnett, while dying of cancer in the late sixties, said he believed he'd been exposed to radiation at the crash site. Then, a few years later, a nurse named Mary Anne Gardner spoke to a woman patient who told a similar tale. That lady also died of cancer, allegedly.

Whatever crashed at the Foster Ranch may not have been irradiated, but it seems the Army was concerned about the possibility, at least at first. And if the government was in fact trying to cover up a radiological accident, they might very well try falsifying wind measurement data, and lie about the trajectory of any balloons they had launched during that time.

It is a very curious feature of human psychology as to how we often don't accept conclusions that don't fit our pre-conceived ideas, regardless of evidence. We can see it in the uncritical acceptance of many of the more ridiculous claims made in ufology and from the inverse perspective the continuing reference to NYU flight 4 as the "explanation" for Roswell is a classic example.As Kevin notes in the main article and David Rudiak has extensively documented The flight 4 hypothesis is totally falsified. I have only two minor additional points. The USAF report is very useful I think in that it collates in one place a very wide range of documentation some of which establishes a clear set of authentic documentation as to why flight 4 was not launched as a constant level flight.The other very minor point...in terms of the many problems with the Moore model for the imaginary flight 4 trajectory one is that the data tables contained in the book he co-authored do not have correct calculations in them. David R and Brad Sparks discuss this and possible ways it could have come about on David's website. I recalculated Moore's model leaving in all the dubious assumptions and if you do that you recover his proposed trajectory. The mismatch of the data in the intermediate columns in the data table look like a sorting error to me, so Moore may well have been right in saying the publishers scrambled his data.The problem with Moore's model is that there clearly was never a constant level balloon flight 4 and, secondly, the unreasonable assumptions he used to get a trajectory that would fit.

The interested reader should look at the data for themselves, it is rare to find a hypothesis that falls apart at the touch quite so easily and completely as Flight 4.

The Foo Fighters were a concern to Allied intelligence during WW II. They created a high level committee to study the problem, fearing they might be an Axis weapon. When the war ended, the interest ended.

Anthony -

There is another problem with Flight No. 4 and Moore's analysis. Originally Moore said it was launched about dawn, as required by the rules under which they operated. He changed the launch time to 2:30 or 3:00 a.m. because a front came through changing the winds aloft data and making his calculations inaccurate.

His calculations also end some 17 miles short of the Foster ranch and overlooks the fact that the area where the debris was found was a pasture that Brazel checked every other day or so.

And let's not forget that Flight No. 5, the first successful flight according to all the records, did not contain a single rawin target... and, of course, the mythical Flight No. 4 was described in the documentation as a cluster of balloons and a sonobouy... nothing about radar targets.

Kevin...I agree...the list of dodgy assumptions he makes is long and surprising ( someone with that level of expertise would have to have known what he was doing and how conceptually invalid his model is). A sad epitaph for a great man.

It certainly seems disingenuous to me when Roswell proponents use semantics to bolster their claims. This is never more apparent than when they are attempting to dismiss "Flight#4".

It has apparently become part of the religion to piously repeat "There was no flight 4".

This dismissal is a purely rhetorical (or liturgical) device.

Skeptics don't care one whit if the flight is CALLED #4. There is clear evidence that A flight was launched, regardless of how you decide to label it.

The timing of the flight and the composition of the rig are in question. But the "proof" offered by proponents of those things is ONLY speculation.

We have hashed this out several times with additional evidence--all of which the proponents simply ignore. Skeptics familiar with this issue don't claim that they have PROVEN anything. Dogmatic certainty is the realm of the believers (as we see above).

Talking about the composition of Flight 5 in order to characterize the composition of another flight is UFO thinking.

OK, Flight No. 4 or Flight No. 5, or something else. We still have a big problem in why did the Intelligence officer for the 509th think that it was something else than a balloon? Something completely out of his experience. Why were his superiors at the base also fooled? Why was the base commander and future vice-chief of staff of the USAF fooled enough to authorize a press release indicating that they had a “flying disc”?

When the Air Force put out the dummies explanation for the alleged alien bodies they really showed that they could be taking this issue seriously. They just laughing at the Ufology community. I could tell that back when I was a skeptic myself.

Oh, for crying out loud... Flight No. 4 was cancelled. Crary said so. A cluster of balloons was launched later with a sonobouy to test the receiving capabilities of the microphone. This was no Flight No. 4, had a specific purpose, was expected to stay on the military reservation, launched well after sun up which means Moore's atmospheric track was in error, did not include rawin targets. It simply is not the same thing as the constant level balloon flights, the first of which was Flight No. 5... say what you will about the true believers, but the debunkers are just as bad at ignoring the data that do not fit into their world view.

Thanks for at least recognizing that the believers aren't playing straight when they talk about Flight 4. David really takes it into the propaganda realm when he says over and over that the Flight was "non-existent". It's all purely rhetorical--he must know that he is being misleading.

There are so many unsupported assertions in your questions about this. And they all have been discussed to death (just like Flight 4).

So if you are truly interested in what skeptics have to say about these matters, let me point you to Tim Printy's famous Roswell issue of Sunlite.

http://home.comcast.net/~tprinty/UFO/SUNlite4_4.pdf

Now I don't mind if you disagree but please understand that ALL of these issues have been dealt with by skeptics. I am happy to answer any questions.

Kurt Peters wrote: their shamefull book "UFO Crash at Roswell: The Genesis of a Modern Myth", by Benson Saler, Charles Ziegler, and Mogul engineer Charles Moore."

Really? Shamefull?

Anthony Bragalia in RR blog: I am motivated by a sense of obligation to truth and to history.

"versus"

In Ziegler/Saler/Moore book "UFO crash at Roswell: The Genesis of a Modern Myth", chapter two (Ziegler) and in "the central motif of the Roswell myth" part, page 51 my edition":

Thus, the central motif of the Roswell myth is that a malevolent monster (the government) has sequestered an item essential to humankind (wisdom of transcendental nature, i.e., evidence-based knowledge that we are not alone in the universe). The culture hero (the ufologist) circumvents the monster and (by investigatory prowess) releases the essential item (wisdom) for humankind.

Kevin everthing you said about the flight is simply your own supposition based on a highly biased interpretation of scant and ambiguous evidence.

Predictably you state it all as as proven fact. I know you see everything through UFO-believer glasses. For instance, you are on record as saying that there is NO DOUBT that a space ship crashed at Roswell.

When we get into "no doubt" territory, many folks recognize religion for it is.

Because the burden of evidence/proof is for the one claiming an affirmation, in five minutes, two seconds, and this comment in YOUR blog, you will demonstate, that the launch (wait, they were no NYU launch(es) before June the 5th, folloqing David!!!) did not include radar-targets.

Please, Kevin, if you are so certain of this, it will be 2s for you, as an Roswell myth exegete, to DEMONSTRATE the flight of June the 4th did not include radar-targets.

Let’s not jump to conclusions. All I was indicating in my first sentence is that I’m less studied on the details of the Mogul balloon tests than many of the other people posting here.The balance of the comments addressed why a balloon explanation has some serious problems.

Of course the flying saucer crash explanation does have some problems too. One be the evolutionary development of the story. The fact that several of the claimed witnesses have made things up as is revealed in Kevin’s books. The obvious financial benefit to the town of Roswell to keep this thing going. The fact that Gen. Twining’s memo stated that the Air Material Command didn’t have any physical evidence over two months later.

On the other hand, there are some counterpoints, for example on the Twining memo, it is possible that it was designed to courter rumors inside the government that there had been a crash at Roswell. One could say “Perhaps they protest too much,” about not having physical evidence. One could cite the way the Ultra intelligence was handled during WWII and suggest that flying saucer data was being handled similarly.

So it is quite the enigma. I guess that I remain in the 50/50 camp on Roswell. But, I think the general case for UFOs looking at of the cases is very good.

Lance, based on your own logic, I'm sure you would agree that everything Charles Moore said about the flight is simply his own supposition based on a highly biased interpretation of scant and ambiguous evidence?

Your are inversing the burden of proof/evidence. "Well, that's ufology".

Well, if you are believing/supporting UFO craft crashed in Roswell (with occupants, shooted in slides -sic-), you have the burden of Evidence to show us such an extraordinary claim and whisfull thinhking is right!

David, Kevin, and the other promoters of the Roswell Modern myth have failed.

You can't produce 'scientific evidence' against a Roswell UFO, and John can't produce 'scientific evidence' for a Roswell UFO..All you can do is snipe at each other..That's UFOlogy..@DavidThe Smithsonian is notoriously biased. Just look up the Edison Institutes funding and see how Edison became a god in their eyes. Tesla did more for our technology than Edison could even dream of, but he wasn't 'American' enough to make the cut. Myths vs. reality. How does one tell the difference.....

I think proof is not very likely here. If UFOs don't exist (as alien spacecraft) then it is very hard to prove a negative. If they do exist then the U.S. and other major governments don't want the evidence out. Also, the aliens don't seem to want it out either. So what we are left with is mostly various pieces of circumstantial evidence.

@Lance, I'm not sure what motivates you to continue picking nits. Whether Flight 4 (or 5) flew or not has no bearing on whether an alien craft crashed at Roswell. I don't believe an alien craft crashed at Roswell, but I am also good for about a months pay that says a Mogul balloon didn't crash there either. I am not sure of the source of the superior attitude as I see the same religious fervor in the skeptic point of view that is equally willing to ignore facts to support a belief system. I also don't understand why skeptics frequent a forum that obviously favors at least a neutral viewpoint. I can only assume that your posts are intended to draw traffic to your blog which seems pretty sparse. I frankly appreciate the dialog that asks for substantiation, but the never-ending criticism of minutia gets tiresome. I'm just sayin...

What a curious discussionThe original primary documentation States quite clearly in the relevant progress report that ALL constant level flights were recorded in that document for the relevant period. That includes unsuccessful flights.It also clearly states that Mogul flights and service flights were not recorded. The absence of Flight 4 therefore shows that the balloon cluster launched was a service flight ( as actual Moguk flights came later). Service flights are defined for us in the documentation as being tests of specific pieces of equipment and were clearly soperated out from constant level flights which involved a lot of specialised equipment.The documentation also clearly provide the reason for the cancellation of the CONSTANT LEVEL flight 4. The project was required to have totally cloudless conditions due to the hazard to aviation of such large assemblages that were designed to stay aloft over large distances. Crary's diary and the weather data make the reason for the cancellation certain.

The balloon assemblage released later was not a constant level flight as we can be certain it would have been recorded with all such flights. The early NYU flights were making do with less than ideal equipment including balloons that popped quickly under solar heating. There was no point in wasting scarce equipment on a release later in the morning. As per usual practice the specialised equipment would have been removed but the balloons eventually released as there was no way to empty them, with a sonobuoy being left on to test reception. In other words it became a service flight which, with no altitude control would have ascended rapidly, and descended equally rapidly as balloons burst at altitude. horizontal distance covered would be limited.

To continueTo play a sort of 'fantasy flight 4" game we need to presume the project breached regulations, falsified official documents and that Crary had the foresight to adapt his own diary to cover up what would have to have been their most successful flight of the 1947 season.Even in such a fantasy world it STILL doesn't work as Moore's alleged trajectory contains so many invalid assumptions that the trajectory isn't worth the paper it's printed on. I refer the reader to David Rudiak's website for a detailed discussion which I have cross checked and for all practical purposes agree with ( I am slightly more generous in my interpretation of the errors in Moore's data table which look like a sorting problem has crept in somewhere). The trajectory analysis is in someways superfluous, although a very interesting exercise, as the documentation clearly establishes that no CONSTANT LEVEL flight was launched that day.

More generally I do wish that the small group of us prepared to accept the data regardless of a provor anti ETH conclusion ( see recent discussions on McMinville, the dreaded slides and now this discussion) could be joined by one person....just one would be enough to make my day... From a generally sceptical overall standpoint.

Accepting that the data falsifiies the flight 4 hypothesis does not prove the ETH...far from it. What is does show is a objective rationale approach, without fear or favour rather than a dogmatic ideological position. Come on...the water of cold critical rationalism may look a little chilly but is very pleasant once you get in there...

Anthony Mugan wrote:The balloon assemblage released later was not a constant level flight as we can be certain it would have been recorded with all such flights. The early NYU flights were making do with less than ideal equipment including balloons that popped quickly under solar heating. There was no point in wasting scarce equipment on a release later in the morning. As per usual practice the specialised equipment would have been removed but the balloons eventually released as there was no way to empty them, with a sonobuoy being left on to test reception. In other words it became a service flight which, with no altitude control would have ascended rapidly, and descended equally rapidly as balloons burst at altitude. horizontal distance covered would be limited.

Not only do the Mogul Project records make it quite clear there was never a CONSTANT ALTITUDE flight #4, which was clearly cancelled, so do subsequent OFFICIAL histories of flight to which I linked (Cambridge Lab controllers of Mogul, NASA, and USAF history), ALL of which make UNAMBIGUOUSLY clear that it was Flight #5 from the next day that was the first NM constant altitude flight.

All of this goes in one ear and out the other of the so-called "skeptics", who just pretend this documentation doesn't exist.

Instead, they are now grasping at the SMALL, Mogul service flight of a sonobuoy, not the mythical 600 foot tall giant "Flight #4" demanded by Moore and AFOSI in 1994/95 as being absolutely necessary to explain what Brazel allegedly found. (Such as 200 yard wide debris field)

And as you point out, our seemingly physical science ignorant "skeptics" don't seem to get that just like an ordinary weather balloon, a service flight WITHOUT constant-altitude control, goes straight up until it reaches an altitude where the balloon/balloons overextend and catastrophically fail. In fact, this would be exactly what would have been desired, since such a short flight would be unlikely to get off the White Sands range and into civilian air space, as typical constant-altitude flights did. (One reason why they had to be carefully tracked and why the CAA required them to issue NOTAMs to alert outside aviation to a possible flight hazard.)

Again, Moore's trajectory model absolutely, necessarily required a CONSTANT-ALTITUDE balloon (not a service flight) to make it work, and even then he could only make it work using numerous mathematical cheats and highly dubious assumptions (such as launching in complete darkness at 3:00 a.m.).

I am not nearly so generous in my assessment of Moore's motives as you are. This was a deliberately hoaxed trajectory to try to "prove" that a totally undocumented constant-altitude flight (namely #4) explained Roswell. The mathematical "mistakes" are simply too numerous, and all in the same direction (to take it "exactly" to the crash site) for these to be accidental. Moore was also caught red-handed by Brad Sparks and myself hoaxing other Mogul data, such as altering the real Mogul Flight #5 ground trajectory plot to distant this flight from Roswell base, while claiming he plotted it "without change". See:

http://www.roswellproof.com/flight4_trajectory.html

http://www.roswellproof.com/Flight4_Addendums.html#anchor_3600

So the non-skeptical "skeptics" are now grasping at a small Mogul service flight to explain Roswell, with zero evidence, such as the recovery of a Mogul sonobuoy or a document to back them up. In fact, back in 1947, the recovery of ANY sort of equipment was specifically denied by Gen. Ramey, and as the skeptics endlessly tell us, only 1947 news stories count, not testimony decades later (unless it is somebody like Moore, who had flawless ancient memories).

Part 2In addition, Moore's weather officer, Irving Newton, who Ramey dragged in to officialy ID the already IDed weather balloon/radar target in his office, said back then it could have come from any number of weather stations. That was his position in the present day as well when I and others interviewed him. He was a big Roswell skeptic, but didn't think what he witnessed had anything to do with Mogul.

On my website, I also have many examples of balloon/targets coming down elsewhere in the country or being put on public display by the military immediately afterward to debunk the saucers. E.g., there was press demonstration only two days later at Ramey's command at Fort Worth AAF, complete with balloon/target and radar tracking trailer. Clearly FWAAF had easy access to the necessary balloon/radar target paraphernalia for Ramey's press conference. See e.g.:

www.roswellproof.com/militarydebunk.html

http://www.roswellproof.com/balloondemos.html

http://www.roswellproof.com/FWSTJuly11.html

http://www.roswellproof.com/balloon_crashes.html

But according to the "skeptics", Ramey's self-described SINGULAR balloon/radar target just HAD to come from Mogul.

Albert wrote:The Smithsonian is notoriously biased. Just look up the Edison Institutes funding and see how Edison became a god in their eyes. Tesla did more for our technology than Edison could even dream of, but he wasn't 'American' enough to make the cut. Myths vs. reality. How does one tell the difference.

In general, I revere the Smithsonian as an American treasure, but some of the people running the organization leave a lot to be desired. At the very least, they should stick to FACTS in their so-called scientific publications, and not be publishing obvious propaganda pieces.

As a counterpoint, the Smithsonian opened a branch museum in Las Vegas a few years ago (The National Atomic Testing Museum) devoted to the nearby atomic testing. I visited this last spring.

They also opened a UFO exhibit within the museum and played it pretty straight. E.g., they had one exhibit displaying a small amount of physical debris from a Soviet UFO crash in 1989 near Dalnaeorsk, commonly called the "Height 611 UFO incident" after the the name of the hill upon which the object was observed and debris was found. ( Wikipedia has a short description of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_611_UFO_incident )

There was also some exhibits on Roswell. (My main gripe here is they clearly swiped some of the material off my website and gave no credit to the source.)

In addition, there have been some serious public panel discussions on the UFO subject there, with speakers such as Robert Salas (ICBM missile shutdowns), Charles Halt (Rendlesham), and Nick Pope.

Probably what is going on here is the museum director, Charles Palmer, has an obvious interest in the subject matter and is willing to treat it seriously. He also hosts a radio show, where he has interviewed people like Halt, Salas, Pope, Stan Friedman, George Knapp, Dr. Lynne Kitei, Alejandro Rojas, Frank Kimbler, etc. on the topic, all obvious UFO nutcases, including director Palmer.

http://www.nationalatomictestingmuseum.org/radioshow.aspx

My chief criticism of the atomic testing portion of the museum was sweeping the deadly effects of atomic testing on the "downwinders" from the test site under the rug, including Las Vegas where I grew up.

I still vividly remember an errant pink atomic cloud drifting over town in 1954 when I was in kindergarten. My older sister later died of a very rare form of leukemia that may very well have been the result of the fallout received. Nary a mention of the health risks in any of the exhibits. It is now estimated tens of thousands of downwinders died early deaths from the fallout, particularly residents of towns in southern Utah and western Colorado that were hit particularly hard.

This was a national disgrace, since it was already well-known by authorities that even low doses of fallout would have deadly results on some fraction of the population. It was mass murder in slow-motion in the name of national security.

I read up on this a little bit at one point. A striking example of criminal negligence I found in one book, which published a letter from Dr. Norris Bradbury, who was from the Univ. of California and director of Los Alamos at the time of the 1950s above-ground testing. His daughter had married a U.S. park ranger and he was stationed in Zion National Park in southern Utah. Bradbury wrote his daughter to get herself and his two grandchildren the hell out of there because of the A-bomb tests. Bradbury clearly knew of the dangers, particularly to children.

But officially, the public back then was told the fallout from the testing was harmless, another example of a government coverup that didn't come out for many decades.

I jsut wrote:It is now estimated tens of thousands of downwinders died early deaths from the fallout, particularly residents of towns in southern Utah and western Colorado that were hit particularly hard.

OK, I decided to double-check that, and the most authoritative estimates placed the number of U.S. fall-out related deaths at 11,000 to 17,000 people. Not "tens of thousands" as I wrote but pretty close. See, e.g.,

In addition, many thousands of others developed non-fatal diseases, such as thyroid abnormalities from radioactive iodine. Many thousands of lifestock were also killed downwind of the tests, particularly in southwestern Utah. Leukemia rates, particularly in children, also spiked there, during atomic testing.

Here is one article detailing how particularly hard southwestern Utah was hit and how the government lied about the dangers and covered it up, using the rationale of "national security", including falsifying actual radiation readings from monitoring stations to make them appear safe:

Have to say that I agree with you 200% but just for the sake of argument, one thing I don't fully understand - why does it matter that there were no rawin targets either on the mythical 4 or 5 flight? I mean, Mac sure didn't find no rawin remains and Ramey just had someone bring anything they could find to put on his floor.Why the importance in context of scrapping the mogul explanation.

Erez Robinson wrote: one thing I don't fully understand - why does it matter that there were no rawin targets either on the mythical 4 or 5 flight?

Ramey displaed a rawin in his office and said it was the "disc" that was found. Brazel a few hours later was brought to the office of the Roswell Daily Record, claimed he found "rubber strips" that maybe came from a large balloon (but never described an actual balloon), sticks, foil paper, and tape with "flower patterns" on it.

The rubber strips were supposedly scattered across an area 200 yards across. Further, he claimed he found this debris on June 14, but ignored it, and didn't gather it until the 4th of July. Then at the end he recanted his testimony, saying he was quite certain he didn't find any sort of weather deviee since he had previously found two weather balloons on his ranch and this didn't resemble "in any way" what he had previously found. Yet Ramey also displayed a seemingly intact weather balloon along with his broken rawin target. Ramey always referred to what was recovered in the singular, thus A balloon, and A radar target. That is what the photos also show.

The debunkers claim the 200 yard across field of "rubber strips" was from the 200 yard tall Mogul balloon. Problem here is that all actual such Mogul balloons from that period are fully accounted for. That's why they had to invent a nonexistent, totally undocumented "Flight #4", supposedly launched June 4.

In addition, to account for Ramey's rawin and Brazel's description of something that sounds like a rawin, this nonexistent balloon would also have had to have carried at least one rawin target. But all of the DOCUMENTED rubber balloon flights of June and early July 1947 carried no such targets. The first such balloon shown to have actual radar tracking wss a polyethylene one (#8) in early July.

So if there was no Mogul-associated balloon flight with a rawin, then Mogul couldn't have had anything to do with it.

Brazel also failed to describe anything else Mogul-like, like equipment. Nobody back then ever did, then or now. Ramey, e.g., also denied any equipment was found.

Brazel also specifically denied finding anything like balloon rigging, yet a real Mogul would have had hundreds of yards of it attached to all those weather balloons. The missing Mogul rigging is another "dog that didn't bark" fact swept under the rug by the debunkers.

Mac sure didn't find no rawin remains and Ramey just had someone bring anything they could find to put on his floor.

Well, exactly. Rawins and weather balloons would be easy to obtain. In fact, they staged a public saucer debunking launch of same at Fort Worth AAF 2 days later.

What Ramey displayed didn't match what Brazel described, except in the most superficial way. No "rubber strips" in Ramey's office, and Brazel sure never described an intact balloon.

More damning, totally inadequate quantity of debris from both Brazel and Ramey photos for it to have been from a Mogul. And none of Brazel's "flower tape" can be seen in the photos either that was supposed to tie this to Mogul. Even the AF debunkers in 1994 were forced to admit their high level, never identified government photoanalysts couldn't find any evidence of it, and nobody else can either.

For anyone interested, Tim Printy quite soberly addresses the various claims made about Flight 4 and essentially demolishes them.

http://home.comcast.net/~tprinty/UFO/SUNlite5_5.pdf

None of Tim's counter arguments included there seem to ever be addressed by the believers. Instead misleadingly repeating that "there was no Flight 4" while closing their eyes and clicking their heels and seems to be the way they roll.

Actually some of the arguments have been addressed and we all simply do not agree on the interpretations. You all look at the flight scheduled for the early morning of July 3 and say, see, the full arrays were launched in the dark but fail to point out that this was in conjunction with a missile launch which set up a different set of circumstances... so, no, I have not written a long rebuttal and do not plan to do so. The arguments have all been made.

As an aside, please not that I have not deleted your post with its link to Printy's article because the informed reader needs to see all points of view, even those that are biased (Hey, he called my arguments biased so I'm just returning the favor).

Thanks for your email about Tim Printy's photo of Flight 9 which I'll reply to in the morning ( it is a lovely illustration of slight cloud cover and a cancelled constant level flight, with the balloons being released as per regulations)I'm tempted to do a much longer set of comments regarding the matters you raise but it will depend on my time availability over the next 24 hrs or so....

I have actually thought the same thing, that I'd do a longer post but it seems to be useless... we just don't agree and I don't think we ever will. I will note only that if you take the Mogul answer off the table, the default is not alien.

Just one additional point. I suggested above that Flight 4 was better considered a service flight as I understood those to be tests of specific pieces of equipment.The Final Report (appendix 10 of the MacAndrew Synopsis in The Roswell Report) contains, in section D, a fuller definition. Service flights were tests of geophysical equipment developed by Air Force Laboratories. The first of these was in May 1948 and some included altitude control. They are reported separately to the research flights such as those in 1947.Flight 4 wasn't even a service flight therefore.

Yes Lance, it was cancelled. But you believe it was launched anyway isn't it? Ok.

The problem is that on one hand your Mogul flight#4 seems to be an obscure and un-important launch, launched out of the timing rules, framed in an apparently irregular project which seemingly admitted flexible recordings and launchings, a project with seemingly ambiguous documentation, which cancelled flights but later apparently launched them anyway, etc.

...on the other hand it was the SUPER SECRET project Mogul (according to the USAF report) balloon that obliged Ramey to make public demonstrations of weather balloons and made him display one of these in the floor of his office as a false lead. So much effort by Ramey for the non important flight #4 which nobody cared for?

Hello LanceAs we seemed to have switched to a public forum rather than an email conversation I'm happy to continue the discussion here...

a) Flight 11You asked me how Flight 11 could be considered compliant with the launch regulations for constant level flights as you suggested it was launched in scattered cloud conditions.

I presumed it would take some time to consider the information but actually the answer is astonishingly simple.

There is limited data available. The sources I am using are:i. Weather data from Columbus, Engle and Roswell (just cloud cover actually) given by Tim Printy in Sunlite vol 5 issue 5 (thank you for the link to this from our earlier conversation about Flight 9).ii. The information on Flight 11 contained in the Technical Report No 93.02 (contained as appendix 12 to the MacAndrew Synopsis in 'The Roswell Report)

At 0500 on the 7th July 1947 cloud cover was described as 'scattered' at all three locations. It remained scattered or 'broken' at Columbus and Engle through to 0900 (the last data given) whilst Roswell became 'clear' at 0600 and remained so to 0900 (again the last data).

The Flight information shows an initial trajectory in the lower atmosphere towards the NNE, before picking up westerly winds (i.e. from the west, towards the east) in the Stratosphere.

This is sufficient to deduce that there was a high pressure system centred east or more probably north east of the launch site. This conclusion is confirmed in the information on Flight 11 in the report referenced above, which discusses certain features of the flight path in relation to anti-cyclonic conditions over the Sacramento mountains (the balloon was ENE of the launch site at that point).

So...what can we conclude from all that?

Columbus and Engle are to the west of the launch site, Roswell to the NE. Roswell had clear skies by 0600 which most probably indicates a slight movement of the high pressure system. Given a centre to the system towards the east or more likely slight north of east, given the tropospheric wind direction near Alamagordo. It is quite credible to suggest that Alamagordo may have had similar atmospheric pressure to Roswell (there is always isobaric curvature around these systems - rarely in perfect circles but ending up with a particular isobar circling back around the anti-cyclonic system.The scattered cloud is absolutely typical of the airflow around the edge of such a system. If you were standing in Engle or Columbus and knew the wind direction and wanted to find clear skies you would head east.

Based on the available data I can't totally prove that the launch site had clear sky at 0500 but it is consistent with the limited data I currently have (oh, for a synoptic chart - that would totally nail it!!). The idea that this establishes that the NYU project breached regulations is not even remotely convincing.

Perhaps I shouldn't be too critical as I did a fair bit of meteorology and climatology as part of my degree, although the above doesn't require particularly high level knowledge of how weather systems work

I still don't see why the commander of the 509th would have mistaken any balloon, aircraft, or missile for a flying saucer. And, be so convinced that he would have is information officer go to the press with that claim. I can believe these people are that incompetent.

Well, first you are assuming several things that are not in evidence. We don't know that the commander precipitated the press release. Marcel said he had heard that this was just done by eager beaver, Haut. Haut. Maybe it was only intended it for local consumption as a sort of fun feature.

You have to understand that that very day in the Roswell newspapers, these men could have read about another supposed recovered crashed disk (not seen in the air) in Texas that looked like melted aluminum or celluloid and had been reported to the authorities. So there you have documented proof that some folks looked at a bunch of junk and called it a disk.

And that is not the only example of the same thing happening. Were all of those people drooling idiots?

No and that is not what skeptics like me are saying about the men in Roswell.

There was a national frenzy over these flying discs. Ands in those early weeks "flying disk" did not mean flying saucer from outer space. It just meant some contraption that people all over were apparently seeing in the sky.

The stuff found on the ranch does not seem to have identifying marks--perhaps they all got obscured when the thing got banged up in landing.

Obviously the stuff found: balsa sticks, foil paper and rubber material looked like it could have been intended to be in the sky. Brazel had already decided that it was a disk and he primed the men going out to see the stuff to see a disk, too. Since no one knew what a disk was--this strange stuff (strange only in the sense that it didn't have clear purpose being on the ranch) could have certainly been one. Especially considering the news reports the men may have seen.

Never forget (as the myth makers would have you forget) that Marcel himself said (twice) that the stuff he found on the ranch is the same stuff he was photographed with.

The title of Kevin's article is "Ask an expert and Project Mogul'. In this case I would suggest asking someone with a basic knowledge of meteorology.

Just for the record... using the flight track data for Flight 8 (in Technical report No 1 - also one of the appendices to the Roswell Report (No. 13?) together with the cloud cover information presented by Printy in Sunlite vol 5 number 5 we see:a) broken or scattered cloud at Columbus and Engle to the west of the launch siteb) clear skies at Roswell to the NEc) Easterly (i.e. blowing to the west) low level winds at the launch sited) Northerly (i.e. to the south) winds at around 15,000 feete)Easterlies (actually more towards the SE) at low level around 20 miles south of launch site which Flight 8 picked up during descent.

It is blatantly obvious from that information that there was anti-cylonic conditions at Roswell.

If Haut put out this press release on his own, i.e. without any orders, don't you think there would be some career consequences for that act. In that scenario he would have exceeded his authority, embarrassed his unit and his commander, and caused problems for the general commanding the Eighth Air Force. Is there any evidence of discipline for Lt. Haut?

Also, the media people questioned what he was doing and he told them the colonel wanted it out.

You offer your own speculation of what might/must have happened and that is fine.

But your own musings on how you think the Army should have handled the affair (under my prosaic scenario) can't rise high enough to be evidence.

And to get to the point that you can say "therefore flying saucer", I think you need actual evidence.

And that is where the case so miserably weak.

Please sometime listen to the podcast that Kevin did with Paul Kimball

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFXHDST2gy4

There Kevin, I think, honestly lays out the actual state of the evidence for Roswell.

He also laments how, whenever he follows leads towards something that would serve as actual contemporaneous evidence, there is ALWAYS a dead end or fraud.

Much of what the uninformed think of when they think of Roswell (the big saucer, the bodies, etc) came into the mythology because of the stories of now discredited (by Kevin often) witnesses. But even though the very structure of the thing has been ripped out from beneath it, those ideas have already entered the pop culture and remain with us today.

So again, having a difference of opinion is great. You don't agree with me, fine.

I would beware those who dogmatically state their opinions as fact. And I appreciate being called on it if I do it.